Murder of Marion Parker

Frances Marion Parker was a 12-year-old student at Mount Vernon Junior High School in the Lafayette Square section of Los Angeles when she was abducted on December 15, 1927. A man posing as an employee of her father's bank told the school registrar, Mary Holt, that Marion's father, Perry Parker, had been in an accident and needed to see her. Holt released Marion into the man's custody, and the child was reported missing later that day.

The following day, the Parker family began receiving a series of ransom telegrams demanding $1,500 in $20 gold certificates, signed with pseudonyms including "Fate," "Death," and "The Fox," some containing Greek script. An initial ransom exchange attempt on the night of December 16 failed after the kidnapper suspected police surveillance. On the evening of December 17, Perry Parker met the kidnapper alone at West 5th Street and South Manhattan Place. The abductor, armed with a sawed-off shotgun and his face covered, took the ransom money and then pushed Marion's body from his car before fleeing. An autopsy determined she had been dead for roughly twelve hours; her limbs had been severed and her abdomen disemboweled and stuffed with cloth, with her eyes held open by wire. Her severed limbs, wrapped in newspaper, were found the next day in Elysian Park.

Investigators traced a laundry mark on cloth found in the body to the Bellevue Arms apartments, and fingerprints recovered from the getaway car and ransom letters were matched to William Edward Hickman, a 19-year-old former coworker of Perry Parker at the First National Bank of Los Angeles. Evidence in Hickman's apartment, including bloody footprints and partially burned draft ransom letters, corroborated his involvement. Hickman fled north, and was tracked through sightings in Albany and Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, where he spent some of the marked ransom certificates. He was arrested by Chief of Police Tom Gurdane and traffic officer Buck Lieuallen in Echo, Oregon, on December 22, 1927, following a car chase, with much of the ransom money found in his possession.

While detained in Oregon, Hickman initially claimed two other men were responsible for the murder, an account police determined was false since the men had been incarcerated at the time. He subsequently confessed in writing to strangling Parker, draining her body of blood, and dismembering her. He also confessed to a separate murder committed with an accomplice during a robbery.

At trial, Hickman's defense argued he was insane, claiming he acted on direction from a supernatural figure he called "Providence," using a then-new California insanity plea. Prosecutors and a jail psychologist presented evidence undermining this claim, including testimony that Hickman had asked jailers how to "act crazy." In February 1928, a jury found Hickman guilty and rejected the insanity defense; he was sentenced to death. His appeal to the California Supreme Court was unsuccessful, and he was executed by hanging at San Quentin State Prison on October 19, 1928.